Aug 09, 2008
Historic Preservation and America in The World – Part 1
This is an election year. And while this blog is certainly not intended to be a political forum, it is about what I do professionally and that, in part, is historic preservation. Domestically the roles of historic preservation are becoming better known – downtown revitalization, ...
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Aug 09, 2008
Cost Effective Preservation and Fiscal Responsibility
A couple of times each year I get to attend the awards ceremony of a state Main Street program somewhere, most recently in Raton, New Mexico. Under director Rich Williams, the New Mexico Main Street Program has become one of the best in the country. The ...
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Aug 09, 2008
The Truck Farm – Local Economic Development (and southwestern condiments) at its best
I was in Las Cruces, New Mexico this week for work with the downtown organization. If you wish you can read about that assignment and Las Cruces in the previous blog.But among the coolest part of the work I do is the absolutely serendipity nature ...
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Aug 09, 2008
The Museum of Expensive Mistakes in Downtown Revitalization
I spent the first half of this week in Las Cruces, New Mexico (population ~90,000). Las Cruces is New Mexico’s second largest city and is located in the south of the state 40 miles west of El Paso, Texas. I was there for a technical ...
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Aug 09, 2008
Report from New Orleans
Last week I made a quick visit to New Orleans en route to New Mexico. The purpose of the New Orleans stop was to attend the board meeting of US/ICOMOS. But the treat of the day was taking a quick tour of the Holy Cross neighborhood with ...
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Jul 09, 2008
All Preservation is Local
Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil is famously quoted as saying, “All politics is local.” A few years ago the National Trust did an extensive analysis of attitudes toward historic preservation. What did they discover? That all (or nearly all) preservation is local as ...
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Jul 09, 2008
Historic Preservation and Sustainability – Local Journalist getting it right
Yeah, this is a bit self-serving, and I apologize in advance for that. But a couple of weeks ago I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I wrote about it in this blog on June 13th. Well, on that trip I met a journalist by the ...
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Jul 09, 2008
Want to Be Part of Sustainable Develoment? Go to Biddeford, Maine
Biddeford, Maine. Never heard of it? Well, I guess that’s not surprising, it’s a town of only 22,000, 15 miles south of Portland, Maine. But it is one of the oldest towns in New England, with the first sawmill having been built there over 350 ...
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Jul 09, 2008
Story City Update – or He Who Hesitates…
A couple of days ago (July 1) I wrote about the great risk takers in Story City, Iowa, who leaped into the breach and acquired the Charlson Building in their downtown. As part of that post I mentioned a wonderful business located in the Charlson ...
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Jul 09, 2008
Preservation Leadership Training
In the spirit of full disclosure I’ll begin by acknowledging that the National Trust is a great client of mine, and has been for 25 years. However, I am not now nor have I ever been an employee of the Trust and so I actually ...
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